Swingin’ Report Show #19: Buff Shirtless Men

In this episode we sit around talking about the recent announcements of Yakuza Black Panther 2, Yakuza 5, and show our appreciation for buff men without shirts. We go over this weeks news and answer viewer questions, even if they are a bit odd this time around. We are also on iTunes now, having some issues with the RSS still, but you can subscribe. Remember to leave us pretty reviews.

I don’t think George got the joke. “Black Panther” is also a comic series starring king T’Challa who protects the land of Wakanda from people who want Wakanda’s greatest resource, Vibranium. T’Challa (Black Panther) is Married to X-Man Storm and has been a member of the Avengers.

We have been saying the Yakuza engine has been looking outdated for a while now, we being even me, the biggest fan of the series on the forum, to even Sanus, where Yakuza 4 is one of his favourite SEGA games this generation, to George, who even made it a point in his review. All big fans of Yakuza, all acknowledging the graphical faults in the series.

So where is the double standards? If you cannot take the legitimate criticism of an engine that not even the critical press (And by that I mean the prestigious gaming press such as GamesTM or EDGE) seem to praise, then perhaps it is not double standard, perhaps the simple fact is, the engine is just not that impressive.

Stop being a PR representative/fanboy for Sonic Team, neither have people who have praised Binary Domain have said it is a top line game graphically, George has called it average and I have always said that it is one of the better looking Japanese products. If anything, the fact that we have said anything against the Hedgehog Engine/Sonic Team makes it sound like you’re treating them as your god, remind me again how much the last 10 or so Sonic Team products got from the critical press again?

Firstly, you do not even play Yakuza games and we know you are not even willing to try Binary Domain, so why complain?

Secondly, tell us how the Hedgehog Engine is impressive at all. It has elements that are neat concepts, but do not translate well or at all in games. The shadow effects, light passing through fabrics and such are all neat, but none of the games yet show it off outside of extremely confined areas. The lighting is all static too, so I have no idea why the shadow effects are so blocky and shitty looking. Do not even get me started on the grass. There are some GameCube and Xbox games that have better grass.

As far as I am aware, no one here really goes on about the engine used for the Yakuza games. I was actually getting yelled at by Sharky in 2008 when I said Yakuza 3 looked kind of bad graphically. Regardless, largely the same engine has been used to provide about 8 games in 6 years… compared to the Hedgehog Engine’s 2 in 6. To make matters even worse, the Hedgehog Engine is just a graphical engine, Yakuza games use the same tech for almost every gameplay element. The exception is of course the Magical V-Engine used for facial animations.

There is also the fact that the Hedgehog Engine was designed to be sold to developers in need of developmental tools. Yet, to this day there has not even been a single group ask for it, yet basic stuff like the Magical V-Engine is used by numerous studios. If the Hedgehog Engine was any good, at least one studio would be interested!

I think you are confusing actual good designed software with products you are extremely fanboyish for. I heard you go up and down about the graphics of Valkyria, yet the engine used for that is just a filter. Nevermind it looks like 10% better graphically than Skies of Arcadia, a game from 2000. I am not knocking VC, this is just an example.

And you wonder why people get so mad about what you say? You are literally uninformed with these matters, which is fine, but when you come off like such a dick with an ego, of course people will get mad.

Moving on… Good show guys. I know I do not post here much lately, but I still keep up with the podcasts.

Disclaimer: I haven’t yet gotten to listen to this podcast so this comment is being made based on the existing discussion, not the podcast discussion.

The Hedgehog Engine’s strengths are in its incredible draw distance and the fact that you’re literally able to see miles and miles ahead even as you’re running through levels at such an incredible speed. That’s impressive. It may not hold up on Adabat, but I think we can attribute that more to Sega rushing the game (as always) since on other levels it ran, for the most part, just fine.

As far as Amusement Vision, their games are just not technically impressive. Any open world game you can pick out beats out any Yakuza game visually. GTA4 does and it came out years before Yakuza 4, and featured a significantly larger area to explore and actually DRIVE through. I haven’t seen Amusement Vision do anything visually impressive since F-Zero GX, though to be fair at least then they didn’t have to worry about making yearly installments.

Anyway Shadi calling you guys hypocritical may have been a bit much; the fact that BD’s visuals are under so much attack means you have been defending them, which makes it look I suppose like you’re more fans of BD’s visuals than you may actually be. But I’ll agree with him that I don’t see how anyone can possibly call the Hedgehog engine less technically impressive than a game like Yakuza 4. Yakuza 4 runs well, yeah, but it’s not running anything even remotely impressive. Except cutscenes, but those are cutscenes.

Sonic Unleashed doesn’t run at 18 FPS for the VAST majority of the experience. It runs incredibly well until the last couple levels; Adabat, Eggmanland, and that Eggman boss battle.

I agree that framerate drops suck, so tell Sega to stop releasing Sonic games before they’re ready. I don’t see how people can say that the Hedgehog Engine is responsible for this when a majority of the game’s levels run fine on it. If the engine was at fault, every level would run poorly.

“The Hedgehog Engine’s strengths are in its incredible draw distance and the fact that you’re literally able to see miles and miles ahead even as you’re running through levels at such an incredible speed. That’s impressive”

No its not, not when grass looks better in some Playstation 2 or Xbox games, not when the models are so low poly that some could be done in even the generation before that. Current generation racing games such as Burnout easily top current HD Sonic games.

And Sonic Unleashed DOES run at 18 fps in more levels than just Adabat. Rooftop Run suffers from the issue and so does that New York level.

And Sanus made the perfect, and most damning, point. The Hedgehog Engine was developed to be a development tool for other developers to make, SEGA/Sonic Team even had a big push for the engine, plenty of PR events took place and how many development kits for the Hedgehog Engine has been sold? A grand total of zero. Clearly industry professionals do not consider the said engine good enough.

Sonic Team had over 2 years to develop Sonic Unleashed… That’s the average development time in the industry and the Yakuza team and AM2 have no trouble developing games in less time, the fact that Silver the Hedgehog was still a glitchy broken game after 3 years of development with no real redeeming quality is all that needs to be said.

Nagoshi games aren’t blasting through at speeds of 100mph+ in his game. his games would have framerate issues too if they were.

Going that fast in such a big detailed environment takes a lot of power. Hedgehog Engine doesn’t have the best textures because they are lowering the textures so it can actually run on current generation hardware. It’s still very detailed for being so big and going so fast.

You guys are so fast to bash Sonic Team. I don’t think Nagoshi’s engine is crap, but it really is over-rated by most of you, I called it crap because you have no trouble praising it yet you bash the Hedgehog Engine when it is way more technically impressive.

But whatever. This area is to discuss the podcast, so I’m done discussing Hedgehog Engine

“Nagoshi games aren’t blasting through at speeds of 100mph+ in his game. his games would have framerate issues too if they were”

Play any current generation racer like Burnout. Said series has no issue with framerate AND looks better than Sonic Unleashed/Generations.

“Going that fast in such a big detailed environment takes a lot of power. Hedgehog Engine doesn’t have the best textures because they are lowering the textures so it can actually run on current generation hardware. It’s still very detailed for being so big and going so fast”

What? I and no one else has even mentioned textures at all, we’ve been talking about the polygon count, you know, the things that make the shapes of everything in the game. They are incredibly poor when games just as fast or even more expensive (Go play Burnout or Armoured Core) are much more detailed in their enviroment. If anything, because we’ve been saying how good Sonic Team’s art direction is, we’ve been directly complimenting their texture work.

See how the clever texture work/art direction completely hides how low poly that mountain is? There are lots of cases of that in Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Generations.

“You guys are so fast to bash Sonic Team. I don’t think Nagoshi’s engine is crap, but it really is over-rated by most of you, I called it crap because you have no trouble praising it yet you bash the Hedgehog Engine when it is way more technically impressive”

*rolls eyes*

You are completely mixing us with us liking the Yakuza team’s games with us liking the engine. And even then, I have said Binary Domain is one of the better looking Japanese games, not the best, just one of the better looking ones, hard to argue with that when 90% of Japanese games look subpar now and I did not include Western games in that, because Western games graphically leaps and bounds over Binary Domain and blow the Hedgehog Engine out of the water. George has called the game average looking in graphics and so did Shigs, etc

You seemingly not wanting to discuss the short comings of the Hedgehog Engine really makes you out to be a Sonic Team fanboy, when all of us have come out with our gripes on the Yakuza series and the graphics of certain games developed by Nagoshi’s team.

“No its not, not when grass looks better in some Playstation 2 or Xbox games, not when the models are so low poly that some could be done in even the generation before that. Current generation racing games such as Burnout easily top current HD Sonic games.”

Hm? We can compare the game to itself; Sonic Unleashed on the 360/PS3 is leaps and bounds above the PS2 version, it’s almost unbelievable. To say they’re even remotely comparable is almost mind-blowing.Granted, I s’pose Sonic Unleashed on the PS2 isn’t one of the best-looking PS2 games, but even so, there’s little on the PS2 that can match the speed or scale of Sonic Unleashed.

And I have no idea what you’re referring to with Rooftop Run, level ran like butter, (at least, on the 360) it’s a fantastic showcase of the game’s framerate, I think.

I thought the Pixar-like NPCs looked great, Sonic looked better than ever…I dunno. Not sure where this backlash is coming from. That mountain admittedly doesn’t look great but I can show you tons of things in Binary Domain screens that look much worse (like that car.)

“because Western games graphically leaps and bounds over Binary Domain and blow the Hedgehog Engine out of the water. ”

I think Sonic Unleashed looks better than almost any platformer released from the West, (Though not including Uncharted or Enslaved, though the latter had framerate drops too and neither go as fast as Unleashed,) including the likes of Ratchet and Clank. Unleashed really impressed me visually, game blew me away, and the speed’s incredible.

No, the engine hasn’t been sold but Square-Enix immediately offered a job designing next generation engines to Yoshihisa Hashimoto, who created the Hedgehog Engine and designed the game, and he took it. Obviously they were impressed with his work. Maybe nobody was in the market for something like the Hedgehog engine, I can’t really think of what other types of games would necessarily need to go that fast. But clearly he has talent and developed a great engine and Square-Enix recognized it.

2 years isn’t a hell of a lot of time for Sonic Unleashed’s development when you consider that at least half of that was spent making the engine. Usually when engine creation is involved in a game’s development you get a longer period of time than 2 years. (See: Crystal Engine for FF13, which took over 2 years *alone* for its development, etc. Games like RE5, and Metal Gear Solid 4, Japanese-developed games that actually look fantastic, spend far more than 2 years in development.) Nagoshi cranks out Yakuza games every year because he’s used the same engine this whole time, well, until we hit the PS3, but even then, that engine was never impressive on any level. This may be about to apparently change with Yakuza 5, we’ll see when that comes out.

“Hm? We can compare the game to itself; Sonic Unleashed on the 360/PS3 is leaps and bounds above the PS2 version, it’s almost unbelievable. To say they’re even remotely comparable is almost mind-blowing.”

You did not read the sentence correctly. I was speaking specifically about plant life, which is flat in Sonic Unleahsed and Generation, hardly acceptible current generation standards. And I do not know why you have brought Sonic Unleashed on the PS2/Wii into this argument? I did not mention it once.

“And I have no idea what you’re referring to with Rooftop Run, level ran like butter, (at least, on the 360) it’s a fantastic showcase of the game’s framerate, I think. ”

It’s terrible, the slighest explosion of dust cloud causes the framerate to shutter, hardly an accomplishment.

“I thought the Pixar-like NPCs looked great, Sonic looked better than ever…I dunno. Not sure where this backlash is coming from. That mountain admittedly doesn’t look great but I can show you tons of things in Binary Domain screens that look much worse (like that car.)”

Again, like Shadi, you are mixing up ART DIRECTION for GRAPHICS. The art direction in Sonic Team’s games are very good, however the graphics are seriously lacking. You just said compare the car in Binary Domain, compare the cars in City Escape in Sonic Generations, they look like they’re straight out of the Dreamcast, whilst the one in Binary Domain have a lot higher polygon count. Sonic Unleashed/Generation relies on a lot on art direction to hide its low poly graphics, that is just a fact.

“I think Sonic Unleashed looks better than almost any platformer released from the West”

That means nothing. Monkey Ball is the best looking puzzle game out there currently, that is not because it is impressive, it is because the competition is so weak. Just because Sonic is a platformer does not mean it gets special pass because technical achievements, especially for platformers, are not limited to the genre. Which sadly is limited in Sonic Unleashed.

And Ratchet & Clank looked several times better than Sonic Unleashed, also has a higher, more stable framerate, especially with buildings falling apart in the background. Whenever the Hedgehog Engine attempted this in Sharmer or Adabat it would dramatically reduce the framerate.

“No, the engine hasn’t been sold but Square-Enix immediately offered a job designing next generation engines to Yoshihisa Hashimoto, who created the Hedgehog Engine and designed the game, and he took it. ”

… One man does not make an engine. He did not design/code the engine, he only directed the game. That is a cheap way to try and justify a shoody engine that no one has decided to use.

And Square Enix has been managed in complete anarchy if you’ve bothered to check, they are hardly an indication of talent in this day and age.

“2 years isn’t a hell of a lot of time for Sonic Unleashed’s development when you consider that at least half of that was spent making the engine”

For the Hedgehog Engine to correctly work, they would need to have designed a stage beforehand so they could come up with the calculations needed to render the light in the game’s action stage. So yes, it is plenty of time when you consider it in that circumstance, they would need to design the levels prior. Especially as the engine’s development started in early 2005, now Sonic Unleashed’s development time has gone to just UNDER 3 years.

You talk of Final Fantasy XIII, MGS4 and Resident Evil 5, but all three are significantly longer games than Sonic Unleashed. In the case of Metal Gear Solid 4, the cutscenes alone are longer than Sonic Unleashed.

No game runs faster than Sonic Unleashed. Especially when Sonic is up to full power and speed, and when he boosts, he flies through these incredibly expansive levels without a trace of pop-up. That is the work of an impressive engine.

We’ll have to agree to disagree on Rooftop Run. There’s no slowdown, at least, on my many playthroughs of it. Try playing it again. 😮

“… One man does not make an engine. He did not design/code the engine, he only directed the game. That is a cheap way to try and justify a shoody engine that no one has decided to use.”

I don’t think Ratchet and Clank looked better than Unleashed and had it tried to run as fast, it would have run into severe framerate problems. Sonic has always sacrificed extreme detail for speed, that’s the nature of the series, to be fast. Not to stand around admiring the scenery.

“… One man does not make an engine. He did not design/code the engine, he only directed the game. That is a cheap way to try and justify a shoody engine that no one has decided to use.”

I ask you again, would the Binary Domain engine be successfully licensed? So would you call that a shoddy engine? You haven’t yet.

“And I do not know why you have brought Sonic Unleashed on the PS2/Wii into this argument? I did not mention it once.”

You said Unleashed had certain graphical issues worthy of a PS2 game. I’m disagreeing in a huge way with that assessment, pointing out the game’s PS2 version as the proof.

“Sonic Unleashed/Generation relies on a lot on art direction to hide its low poly graphics, that is just a fact.”

Sonic was never about high polygon count, you go too fast to notice it. Making high poly environments would have been a waste of time (though I still think they look far better than you give them credit for) and a detriment to the game’s framerate, which, with the exception of the last couple levels and some hub worlds, I think runs great!

As for what you think of SE, eh…dude was recognized for his creation of the Hedgehog Engine. That was my point.

Sounds good Shadow. I mean, if you are right and we are wrong, that would mean that people that are developers and write for Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry would agree with you, saying that the engine is great…. but it doesn’t happen.

“But what the review doesn’t tell you is just how woe-begone the Hedgehog Engine actually is, specifically in terms of its looks. If things look somewhat blocky, that’s because they are… your typical 720p HD game has 45 per cent (!) more detail than Sonic Unleashed, which runs at a super-limp, organ-deflating 880×720 on both platforms.”

So sub-HD, blocky models is now good?

Enjoy the art style, which we said is great on the podcast, ignore the facts it seems.

Many people probably don’t even realise but the water with the hedgehog engine is done by multiple textured layers on top of each other. I noticed once I dropped in the water. First of all no splash(which’s got nothing to do with the engine), but the water itself is very static and yo ucould see the layers mover very unnatural.

The high speed argument is kind of weird as there are games like burnout and wipe out that show beautiful environments and effects without having to suffer polygons and fps.

I mean I really hate the fact that this is the case, cuz they will probably be working with the engine for a longer time. It takes letting go pride to admit to something like this as a dev after working so long on it so i can’t imagine it happening.

I would do like to add that i don’t get how yakuza was brought in this whole debate. Yakuza games have some visuals in some departments as well but what’s that gotta do with the hedgehog engine in the first place?

However I think binary domain looks far better than some make it out to look average or bad. It looks very good imo.

Well I certainly can’t argue with those facts, but I’ll just once again remind you all that no game runs as fast as Sonic Unleashed. To be able to do that with tech specs on par with games that do not is still many console generations off.

“No game runs faster than Sonic Unleashed. Especially when Sonic is up to full power and speed, and when he boosts, he flies through these incredibly expansive levels without a trace of pop-up. That is the work of an impressive engine. ”

And incredibly expansive? The majority of the game is tight narrow spaces. There is nothing expansive about it, its another trick to make the title seem like its faster then it actually is. Everything seems to be flowing by at incredible speed when you go through pathways, once you’ve reached large open spaces, you can tell that the title is at the same level as Burnout.

And that game runs at 60 fps. With a much higer polygon count.

“I don’t think Ratchet and Clank looked better than Unleashed and had it tried to run as fast, it would have run into severe framerate problems. ”

Burnout Paradise and Armoured Core do not suffer this problem, I’m sure other games would not either as long as they had a competent team.

“Sonic has always sacrificed extreme detail for speed, that’s the nature of the series, to be fast. Not to stand around admiring the scenery”

What is this? How long have you been following this series? Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, 3, & Knuckles, Adventure and Adventure 2 were all top of the line graphically when they came out in every aspect. The nature of the series had been, until 2003, to provide a good sense of speed with fantastic looking backgrounds that good rival the best looking titles on any other consoles. Sonic Team use to be the pace maker, now they are miles behind every other major studio in the industry.

“I ask you again, would the Binary Domain engine be successfully licensed? So would you call that a shoddy engine? You haven’t yet. ”

Yeah no, that argument does not work, for two reasons, one Binary Domain’s engine was not design to be sold to developers, it was designed for Nagoshi’s team to use it. Unlike the Hedgehog Engine, which was designed with developers in mind, the fact no one has decided to use it shows it for the absolute failure it unfortunately is for SEGA.

And two, I have never said that Binary Domain’s engine was impressive when you include everyone from the industry, just because one engine is not great does not mean Sonic Team’s shoddy sub-HD titles get special treatment from me.

“And he was lead technical director, where he oversaw the development of the Hedgehog Engine. ”

Supervised = / = created, which was my point.

“As for what you think of SE, eh…dude was recognized for his creation of the Hedgehog Engine. That was my point.”

So why didn’t the rest of Sonic Team’s coding department leave with him? How you can try and imply that he joined SE because they were impressed with his work? The fact is the engine he supervised has sold 0 copies, it failed it’s purpose of creation. I’d also like to note there are several other reasons people could leave Sonic Team, primary reason being it could be certainly to not work on one IP the entire time.

“You said Unleashed had certain graphical issues worthy of a PS2 game. I’m disagreeing in a huge way with that assessment, pointing out the game’s PS2 version as the proof.”

I said some PS2 and Xbox games. You come back and point out one of the worst “major” games on the platform. Its a strawman argument when there are infact a few PS2 games that are better looking in certain aspects than Sonic Unleashed but taking one of the poorer looking ones to justify your point.

“Sonic was never about high polygon count, you go too fast to notice it. Making high poly environments would have been a waste of time (though I still think they look far better than you give them credit for) and a detriment to the game’s framerate, which, with the exception of the last couple levels and some hub worlds, I think runs great!”

Sonic Adventure did and Sonic Adventure 2 was one of the few games to have FINGERS back in the day. Those were fast games, at least faster than most games in their time period and had impressive visuals for the time they launched.

And George’s link proves everything I’ve said is right on the money, Sonic Unleashed is proven to be anything but a technical masterpiece and hardly an impressive engine. Especially when certain games manage 60 fps and with a much higher, double in some cases, polygon count.

I think the graphical appearance of the Adventure games are overrated, like at how good they were at the Time.

Rayman 2 looked alot better in 1999 than Sonic Adventure, and some games on PSone had alot more fuid animations.

Just half a year after Adventure 2, Jak&Daxter completly blew it out of the water. And no doubt it looked like dated last-gen when the Gamecube game, or look “like a Dreamcast” as people were saying at the Time.

I’m also just mentioning plattformers. The Finger argument is also kinda laughable, I won’t get into it.

Honestly I was more impressed with the Graphics of Unleased then I was with Adventures Graphics at the Time. 3 Years later, they still are good to look at. 3 Years after Adventure 1 and 2 came out, they looked last-gen.

Burnout Paradise; linear track, no objects anywhere to be seen, …it’s a racer. Not a city packed with enemies, breakable objects, multiple paths, etc.

“What is this? How long have you been following this series? Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, 3, & Knuckles, Adventure and Adventure 2 were all top of the line graphically when they came out in every aspect. The nature of the series had been, until 2003, to provide a good sense of speed with fantastic looking backgrounds that good rival the best looking titles on any other consoles. Sonic Team use to be the pace maker, now they are miles behind every other major studio in the industry. ”

Eh? Sonic Adventure wasn’t even one of DC’s better-looking launch titles. Game was incredibly buggy when it was first released in Japan. I can link you to a Jpeg of Eggman in SA1 to see all that game’s graphical flaws. The Genesis games certainly looked nice but they were hardly the best-looking games on the system. SA2 I’ll agree was a big technical triumph for its time.

“the Hedgehog Engine, which was designed with developers in mind, the fact no one has decided to use it shows it for the absolute failure it unfortunately is for SEGA.”

Maybe Sega’s just not great at selling engines? I mean, have they ever done it before? I’m certainly not saying the Hedgehog Engine is Unreal 3 but I wouldn’t call it a terrible engine either. I think it’s pretty impressive in a lot of areas.

“I said some PS2 and Xbox games. You come back and point out one of the worst “major” games on the platform. Its a strawman argument when there are infact a few PS2 games that are better looking in certain aspects than Sonic Unleashed but taking one of the poorer looking ones to justify your point.”

Well dude I’ve been playing the PS2 since 2002, when I got one, up all the way till around 2011. I haven’t played a PS2 game that looked better to me than Sonic Unleashed in any category.

Burnout Paradise is an open world game. The whole series is completely about destruction too, did you look at the video? The whole world has collision detection, in comparison to Sonic Unleashed where so many things have none of this and are just basic polygons, sometimes stuff like the water does not splash or shadow effects will not appear on some walls… How is this good again? It is worth mentioning that time passes by in Burnout Paradise as well. Something Sonic games really do not need, but we will eventually see in future releases when Sonic Team gets off their asses and actually tries to push the tech instead of just trying to get rid of the slowdown.

Sonic Adventure was a complete triumph from a graphical standpoint. There are bugs of course, but the way it ran, how large the game was and how detailed the environments were was an incredible feat for 1998. Compare it to Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid or top of the line PC games like Half-Life and you will see just how far ahead Sonic Adventure was for it’s time. Rayman 2 looked good yeah, but it had far less detail, animations and environments. I assume when you say you can show a jpeg of Robotnik that it is from a cutscene? Well the same concepts lay there, look at the cutscenes from the games I mentioned… They are not even on a comparable level.

The same can be said for Sonic 1 and 2, maybe 3 and Knuckles as well. Look at Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past or Final Fantasy IV which although all are much longer than Sonic 1, each has much less art, music, enemies, pretty much everything – And that was on hardware that could do stuff like Mode7! Outside of a very very VERY small amount of arcade titles (usually also by SEGA), Sonic the Hedgehog 1 was the best looking game of 1991 by a lot. The art and aesthetic design also do not age, look at the trailer of Sonic CD as an example, those graphics are still extremely appealing today. In 5 or 6 years, the environments of Sonic Unleashed and Generations will have aged worse than Sonic Adventure’s had within 10, you can count on it.

I think that overall you are confusing being impressed with something you find cool. I find a lot of sections in Unleashed and Generations cool, but that is just eye candy.

This will probably be the last time I reply here. I mean no disrespect to you or anyone else I replied to prior.

“Rayman 2 looked alot better in 1999 than Sonic Adventure, and some games on PSone had alot more fuid animations.”

What? I have to completely disagree. Any Chaos boss battle was not something you would be seeing on Playstation 1. Sonic Adventure looked amazing from start to finish, now just my own opinion, but from critics of the time. Unlike Sonic Unleashed’s graphics, critics were impressed by that game graphically. The same with Sonic Adventure 2.

“I’m also just mentioning plattformers. The Finger argument is also kinda laughable, I won’t get into it.”

Pray tell how it is laughable? I mentioned how Sonic games never had low polygons until after Sonic Adventure 2, and I pointed out fingers, in a time when such a feat was uncommon, to point out that statement is entirely incorrect.

As for you saying people said it looked like a Dreamcast game… No they did not, it was rated highly and many people were impressed with the visuals at the time amd unlike this debate we are having now, so were all the critics. And it had 60 fps locked, unlike Unleashed, which cannot lock onto half of that at 30 fps.

Now onto ShadowLegend’s post.

“Burnout Paradise; linear track, no objects anywhere to be seen, …it’s a racer. Not a city packed with enemies, breakable objects, multiple paths, etc.”

You have never played the Burnout series, let alone this game, have you? It is all based in one giant island that you go around, crash through buildings, break objects, go through the highway etc, its completely open world.

“Eh? Sonic Adventure wasn’t even one of DC’s better-looking launch titles. Game was incredibly buggy when it was first released in Japan. I can link you to a Jpeg of Eggman in SA1 to see all that game’s graphical flaws. The Genesis games certainly looked nice but they were hardly the best-looking games on the system. SA2 I’ll agree was a big technical triumph for its time.”

This is completely wrong and revisionist history. Sonic Adventure was considered by even critics, the premier looking title on the Dreamcast, likewise with the Mega Drive titles.

“Maybe Sega’s just not great at selling engines? I mean, have they ever done it before? I’m certainly not saying the Hedgehog Engine is Unreal 3 but I wouldn’t call it a terrible engine either. I think it’s pretty impressive in a lot of areas.”

The Yakuza Team’s Magical V-Engine has been sold to a bunch of Japanese developers. The biggest game being Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma. The engine has generated no business, as it was meant to, because most developers probably are not impressed.

“Well dude I’ve been playing the PS2 since 2002, when I got one, up all the way till around 2011. I haven’t played a PS2 game that looked better to me than Sonic Unleashed in any category”

Are you missing how flat the grass in Sonic Unleashed looks? There are Playstation 2 games that are able to beat it hands down on that department.